


Through the looking glass

by millygal



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: M/M, alternative ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-19 15:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10643154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millygal/pseuds/millygal
Summary: Torn down, piece by piece.





	

**Author's Note:**

> An alternate ending type thing, spoilers for 2.08 and this kind of ended up somewhere completely different to where it started out from.

Sam doesn't actually feel the bullet enter his chest, obliterate his heart. He just hears the sound of gunfire echoing off the tunnel walls and everything goes black.

He wakes to find 'DCI Morgan' staring back at him, moustache twitching atop grinning lips, and his entire torso feels like it's being squeezed.

Morgan says something about tumours and recovery rates but nothing can penetrate the hazy fog clouding his senses. Eventually he stops trying to comprehend what's being said and drifts off into fitful slumber.

*

*

*

He's back in that tunnel, the bodies of his friends and co-workers are spread far and wide, all staring up at him with sightless, lightless eyes. Even in death, Gene manages to emit disapproval and scorn. 

He screams, long and loud, lets the sound bounce back against him until he can hear nothing but his own anguish. Heels of his hands pressed tightly against his eyes, Sam drops to his knees, sobs, screams and begs for someone, anyone to help.

There's no one, there'll never be anyone ever again.

The _clunkwhirhiss_ of a heart monitor bursts the bubble he's floating in and he's suddenly falling. His body hits gravel and he feels himself being sucked back out of this reality and into his own.

The last thing he sees before darkness envelopes him, is Gene's mouth fixed in a soundless scream and he thinks he can hear it, ricocheting around the inside of his mind.

*

*

*

Six months, it's been six months since he finally woke up. He's not sure how glad he is to be back in his time. He still feels...well he feels nothing. That's the kicker. All that raging and screaming and beating his fists against invisible barriers. It'd hurt like a son of a bitch but at least he could feel the blood pumping along his veins, the rage and injustice of it all.

Here, now, it's as if he's walking on water and doesn't know how to swim. Everything's coming at him from a comfort zone, safe minimum distance in which to dull any kind of impact.

He's out the hospital, on his feet, not necessarily steady but he's back from the brink, or so he's being told by anyone that manages to pin him down for more than a minute.

The boys and girls of 1973 sill haunt his dreams, still creep up on him in the dark, flash their bloodied faces and make him want to claw out his eyes. 

He's not even sure that what he sees at night is real. They were supposed to be coma induced imaginings but..when he's back there, in that fucking tunnel, he can feel everything so clearly, so sharply that he wishes he could wake just to regain the numbness.

Every day for a month since returning to desk duty, he's stood outside the records room, contemplated going in and looking up his former...what, former friends, enemies, cohorts?

It makes his brain physically ache to think about it but he has to know, needs to find out if living killed them, or dying did.

Finally, after weeks of to-ing and fro-ing, he steps over the threshold, breaths in the musty scent of dated pages from way back when and starts his search. He's hoping to find nothing. If he finds something, then he betrayed them not once but twice.

Once by allowing Morgan to turn him into a Judas. Twice by getting his sorry arse shot and waking up to a place he longer feels he belongs in.

Locating the file cards that point to different decades, he plots out 1973 and dives in, fingers crossed he finds absolutely nothing, making him into a nutter, but not a murderer.

*

*

*

He's covered in dust motes, desperately needs a bath to wash away the stink of years old copy, but can't pull himself away from the files spread about him like a yellowing carpet.

Chris Skelton, Ray Carling, Annie Cartwright...all real, all alive in 1973 and all just begging him to go and take a flying leap off the top of a building. Shit, shitshitshit. Gene..Gene's, Gene had been. Christ.

He thinks of all those nights they'd spent getting pissed, getting angry, getting naked. All the times he'd told himself it didn't matter because none of it was real. He'd wake up a whole man with his conscience clear.

Now he knows differently and his heart begins to contract in on itself. His one saving grace...his dreams are all bullshit. Just fevered imaginings of a mind driven mad by guilt. Gene Hunt lived to be 63 years old. Not bad going for a bloke who drank his weight in whiskey and smoked like he alone was keeping the tobacco industry afloat.

He'd missed him by 13 years. Unlucky for some.

Still Sam's heart contracts and he feels..shit he feels, for the first time in months he can actually feel the world around him. It's dripping slowly back into existence. Tiny sensations crawling across his skin.

The rough edges of the papers he's holding. The scratch of carpet against his legs. It's all finally making it's way through. 

With everything else comes the bone crushing realization that he's let something important slip through his fingers.

*

*

*

Gene sees Sam's body hit the dirt and hears his own voice bellowing. Slick sounds of grief come pouring out of his mouth and he's no way of stopping the ebb and flow of it.

He hears the arsehole with the gun hit the dirt and knows that Ray or Chris have got off a lucky shot. He feels cheated, because judging by the blood pouring from Sam Tyler's chest cavity, he's just been robbed of his DI.

That being the case, he feels it's his right, ney his privilege, to take that bit of scum to pieces. 

He doesn't understand why his hands are covered in blood until he looks down and sees his fingers embedded in Sam's chest. He must have crawled forward at some point, reached out, but he doesn't remember doing it. All he can remember is seeing the spark in Sam's eyes disappear. Hearing the dull thud as his body hit the ground.

He can feel hands grabbing at his shoulders, yanking him back and he hunches forwards, covers the black jacket he's wearing in thick, sticky fluid.

Flash knickers is screaming, screaming and crying and calling out Sam's name but Gene refuses point blank to let go of the lifeless body he's got pinned beneath him.

Sam's his, was always his, his DI, his picky pain in the arse, his friend. No one else has got the right to feel his blood soaking into their clothes.

*

*

*

It's been six months, six months since Gene finally woke up. Woke up to the fact that he's an idiot who should have grabbed a chance while he could. He's not entirely sure he's happy with that realization because that would mean admitting he'd been wrong. Wrong to push instead of pull, wrong to take instead of give.

They'd all come, all crowded round, all thrown a flower for a man they didn't know, but it's Gene who still visits. It's when he's stood on sodden earth in gusting winds or blazing sunshine that he feels again. Feels the breeze batter his cheeks, feels the rain spattering his clothes.

When he feels, that's when he knows. Knows with heart breaking certainty, he's let something important slip through his fingers.

*

*

*

Sam hunches forward against the wind and rain beating against him and tries to ignore the burn at the back of his throat, the sting behind his eyes.

'In loving memory of Gene Hunt

1930-1993

A man who spent his life protecting those he loved.

The things he stood for will survive long after everything else is gone.

Sleep well'

Sam ceases to exist for just a moment. The only thing anchoring him to the here and now, one tear trailing his cheek. It's burns a path across his skin, makes him feel, he wishes it didn't.

*

*

*

Gene pushes forward against the hail and sleet shoving him left and right and tries to blot out the pain in his chest, the thumpthumpthump of his heart.

'In loving memory of Samuel Tyler

1940-1973

A man who spent his life doing what was needed.

The things he stood for will survive long after everything else is gone.

Sleep well'

Gene ceases to exist for just a moment. The only thing anchoring him to the here and now, one tear trailing his cheek. It burns a path across his skin, makes him feel, he wishes it didn't.

 

 

 

Fin

 


End file.
